


Till the Last Dime

by popliar (littlerhymes)



Category: Kazino - BIBI (Music Video)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Gambling, Human Trafficking, Prostitution, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:33:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27684304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlerhymes/pseuds/popliar
Summary: Four times she's bravely and boldly walked into the Tiger's den alone, ready to die for love and honour and all those noble things. And die she had.(Bibi, before and during and after, again and again and again.)
Relationships: Female Gambler (Kazino)/Female Gambler's Friend (Kazino)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 12
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Till the Last Dime

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greenet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenet/gifts).



> Thank you proteinscollide, best and most patient beta reader and friend!

In the stories, the hero always goes alone.

The warrior, the gangster, the prince - they stride alone into the night to rescue the princess and come back triumphant, decked in glory, sword slung at their hips, cigarette between their fingers.

Bibi's first mistake is believing in the stories.

So are her second, third, and fourth mistakes too. 

Bibi wakes up after the fourth time, back in a body whole and almost entirely well, except that no matter how hard she brushes her teeth she can't get the taste of soapy, scummy water out of her mouth.

That'd be from the drowning.

She's now been drowned, stabbed, shot, and most memorably garrotted to death by the Tiger and his men. Four times she's bravely and boldly walked into the Tiger's den alone, ready to die for love and honour and all those noble things. And die she had.

Bibi flops back onto her bed, hand thrown over her eyes against the harsh glare of the morning sun, and tries not to think about the feeling of having her head held down underwater, her hands tied behind her back. 

She'd been clumsy with the poison, too eager, too nervous. They'd caught her right away, and stopped her easily when she tried to run, dragging her back to slowly drown.

She'd died and then woke up, again, lungs burning, recalling the sensation of screaming underwater.

Bibi goes back to the casino for the fifth time that night.

This time she is not dressed to kill, she is not here to be a hero. In her drab clothes and with her hair scraped back into a bun, she looks like nothing more than a lowly cleaner, an employee of the industrial laundromat that serves as cover for the casino. No one pays the slightest attention as she slips in through the back.

Well. Almost 'no one'.

"Hey," says one of the hostesses. She's as dressed up as Bibi deliberately is not, her face carefully made up, her mini dress skintight, a gold chain around her neck. "Do you have a light?"

Bibi fumbles through her pockets, manages to find a book of matches. She strikes one and the hostess leans down, cigarette between her immaculate lips, the air around her heavy with the scent of expensive perfume. 

"Thanks," the hostess says, leaning against the wall, in no hurry to return to the casino floor.

"Busy tonight?" Bibi says, lighting up one of her own. 

The hostess shrugs with a disaffected moue. "No more than usual. They're all the same, you know what they're like." She sneers, taking another drag from her cigarette. "All hands and talk and money."

It's not hard to draw her into conversation. Her name is Wooyeon, Bibi learns, and she hates the casino. She'd quit, except the money is just too good.

"I just don't want to have to put up with the same bullshit for much longer, you know?" Wooyeon says. She rolls her eyes again. "If I'm still here in two years," and she jerks her head towards the casino floor, "just take me out the back and shoot me."

Bibi doesn't die that night. She talks to Wooyeon, and goes home, and sleeps. 

When she wakes up it is the same day all over again. But this time, she does things differently. 

She goes in dressed sharp, dressed dangerous, a gangster's girl if not a gangster herself. When Wooyeon comes out back for her sneaky cigarette, Bibi is waiting, foot tapping. 

Wooyeon clocks her, but instantly glances away as though she'd never looked in her direction at all. Someone who wants to stay out of trouble. Smart girl, Bibi thinks. Smart enough to be the helper Bibi needs.

When Wooyeon starts patting down her pockets, looking for matches Bibi already knows she doesn't have, Bibi steps in close with a silver lighter. 

"Here," Bibi says, flame shooting up with a practiced flick of her finger. She cocks an eyebrow. "Lee Wooyeon, correct?"

"Yeah?" Wooyeon says, cigarette pinched between her fingers, chin tilted up high. "What's it to you?"

Bibi just smiles again, a baring of teeth. "So I hear you've been skimming the top off your takings. Don't think the Tiger would like the sound of that." 

It's just a guess, a blind bet, nothing more than a stab in the dark based on a gut feeling. The way Wooyeon had talked about money, the sharp clever cunning in her eyes, her contempt for the casino and everyone in it. Bibi knows everyone has their buttons. It's just a matter of finding out which one, and this time she needs no second chances.

Something flashes in Wooyeon's eyes, and Bibi feels a surge of regret - but there's no time for that, no room for pity, no matter how much Wooyeon doesn't deserve this. "What do you want?" Wooyeon says, her voice rougher, eyes harder. 

"It's easy," Bibi says, and fishes the poison out of her pocket with a flourish. "Help me, and there'll be money in it for you - more than just a few night's takings, too." 

She leaves the rest unsaid: refuse, and pay the price.

Just a few drops into his drink, she tells Wooyeon, when I give you the signal. It takes a little pressing, but Wooyeon eventually gives in.

All night, she watches Wooyeon from the corner of her eye as the girl hangs over the chair of a rich man, smiling and flirting and pretending everything is okay. Waiting for the right moment.

 _Now_ , Bibi thinks, catching Wooyeon's gaze for one crucial second. _Do it now._ And to cover the moment, Bibi smiles at the Tiger, and pushes all her chips into the centre of the table. A huge bet, the act of a genius or a fool. 

Everyone around the table is a little taken aback. The Tiger even laughs. "You've got guts, girl," he says, and he puffs on his cigar, reaches out for his drink, the one Wooyeon had spiked just moments before when everyone's eyes were on Bibi's gamble. 

Bibi holds her breath - _now now now, yes now_ \- 

But a heavy hand falls on the Tiger's wrist before he can take a sip. "Boss." 

Bibi can't breathe. It's one of the other men at the table, the Tiger's sharp-eyed lieutenant, shaking his head heavily before pointing the finger at Wooyeon. Before Bibi knows what happens the table's been flipped over, cards and chips scattering everywhere, and Wooyeon is kneeling on the ground with her hands behind her head. She's crying.

"Stop," Bibi says, panicking, scrambling to put her body in front of Wooyeon's. "Stop! Leave her alone -" 

The Tiger's men are quick to draw, quick to shoot. It's all over in moments.

Bang bang bang. 

Bibi wakes up, still feeling the bullets punching through her chest, still hearing Wooyeon crying. She crawls out of bed and into the bathroom, dry heaving into the tub though nothing comes up. She curls up on the floor and sobs.

She'd thought she had it figured out. She thought she was cold enough, ruthless enough, to draw Wooyeon into her plan and make it work. 

But all she'd done was get Wooyeon killed as well as herself, and meanwhile the one she was trying to save was still waiting…

"Hold on," Bibi says, to herself, to her love, eyes closed, the bathroom tiles cold against her fevered skin. "Hold on, just a little bit longer. Please."

She clenches her hand into a fist. Both of them, she thinks, Wooyeon and her lover both. She'll save both of them, or die in the attempt. 

Die, and die, and die.

*

Bibi returns to the casino determined to think of a way to save Wooyeon too.

First, though, she'll need to stop Wooyeon from killing her. 

She'd slipped in that night dressed unobtrusively, a cleaner again, a mop in her hand and her hair tied back with a scarf. She'd meant to just scope out the scene a little while trying to come up with a better plan. 

But before she'd even entered the building, Wooyeon had come charging up, fury in her eyes, and dragged her out the back and into the alleyway. 

"You got me killed," Wooyeon snarls, and slams her back against the brick wall hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs. "You threatened me. You said you'd turn me in to the Tiger. You got me killed!" 

"I'm sorry," Bibi says, gasping. "But listen, I just -"

Wooyeon slaps her across the face, and this hurts too. Oh, it hurts. But maybe she deserves it.

"I listened to you and I died, _and then I woke up again_ ," Wooyeon says. She looks Bibi up and down, grabbing her collar in anger. "Last night you came in here looking like a gangster and now you're like this - who the fuck are you really? Tell me what the hell is going on!" 

"Okay." Bibi holds a hand against her stinging cheek. She owes her an explanation, at the very least. "Okay. But not here." 

They don't go back into the casino that night. An evening's lost tips for Wooyeon, one more time that Bibi doesn't save the princess, but what does that matter if they're trapped here, stuck repeating the same day over and over again? They'll get another chance tomorrow.

Bibi tells the whole sordid, improbable story, as they sit on the rooftop on the top of Wooyeon's apartment building, passing a bottle of expensive mezcal (stolen from the casino bar, of course) back and forth between them. Wooyeon's anger dissipates as quickly as it came, mellowed out by liquor and the sheer but irrefutable improbability of everything Bibi tells her.

"How many times have you died now?" Wooyeon says, blinking.

"Five, counting last night." Bibi sighs. "Didn't think this time loop thing would get you too."

"Yeah, well," Wooyeon says glumly. She drinks, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, and passes the bottle back over. 

"I wasn't lying to you about the money though. I really meant to pay you," Bibi says quietly. She sets the bottle down on the concrete with a clink, lies down on the concrete with her head resting on her arms. She looks up into the sky, too bright with city lights to see the stars. "If we got rid of him - if we could shut the whole thing down - that would've been our chance. We could've cleaned the place out, taken everything on the premises."

After a moment Wooyeon laughs. She pretends to knock her knuckles against Bibi's head. "What are you thinking, little girl?" she says, as though she's not just a few years older than Bibi herself. "You think you knock out the Tiger, and suddenly it's all over? Like he's the head vampire or something? Nah," she says, shaking her head, grabbing the bottle and taking another swig. "He's got men everywhere, the whole place is under surveillance. You take him out, you'd best be taking _the whole place_ out."

Bibi sits up slowly. She looks at Wooyeon with unblinking eyes.

"What?" Wooyeon says.

"You're right," Bibi says, quivering with almost barely contained excitement. "You're exactly right. We need to take them all out."

"No," Wooyeon says, shaking her head. "Nope. Nuh uh."

"Yes," Bibi says, and grabs Wooyeon by the wrist, drunk and ecstatic. "Yes, yes, yes!"

They start drawing up ideas, listing everything and everyone they can think of, and Bibi starts thinking up how they're going to get away with it. If they succeed, if they take down the casino and break the time loop, then there's no going back. Wooyeon will have to find a new job, Bibi a new life - so they'd better make this worth it.

They work through a list of the others that will be in the casino that night. The casino is small, exclusive, so there's no more than a dozen clientele. But there's the Tiger, the Tiger's men, hostesses, a bartender… 

"There's too many," Wooyeon says, throwing her phone on the table in disgust. They'd decided to meet up the next day (the same day) in a cafe, and it's a little strange at first to see her dressed down, as casual as Bibi in jeans and a sweatshirt. "We'll never make this work."

"There's not, there won't be," Bibi insists. "Listen, let's go tonight and check things out. I'll go in as a client, you just do your job and keep your eyes open, that's all."

Bibi dresses up again that night, a tight miniskirt, gold on her ears and on her fingers. This time, the men see her - or a version of her, at least, a person with the kind of currency they understand. 

She bets carelessly that night, uncaring of the outcomes, ignoring the eyes and leers and comments. Instead she watches and listens and hears, the way she never had the patience to do on the occasions of her deaths one through five, and leaves with her purse empty, but her head buzzing with half-formed plans.

"If we get the bartender on our side," Bibi says, when she and Wooyeon meet up the next (same) day at a noodle house. "The bartender, and the hostesses, and at least one of the bouncers."

But Wooyeon says, "You forgot someone. Maybe the most important someone." She points at the rough diagram Bibi's drawn up on the back of a napkin, tapping her finger at the desk near the door. "Lee Somin."

Somin was a widow. 

Her husband, now dead and buried, had been one of the Tiger's men - not a street tough, but an office gangster, the kind of man who didn't get his hands dirty but knew every trick in the books, the man who laundered (ha!) all that dirty casino money clean again. 

Except it turned out he'd been selling information to their rivals the whole time. Greedy, grasping, playing with fire, even though he already had more than enough to pay for his beautiful home, his wife's pretty clothes, their children's expensive education. 

Finally he'd slipped up, and so the Tiger killed him too.

Now Somin, widowed, heavily indebted, works the books in his stead.

"She has the keys to the safe," Wooyeon says. "She counts the money at the start and the end of every night. She's the one you need."

"And they trust her?" Bibi says, frowning. 

"Of course." Wooyeon laughs drily, and leans back in her seat. "She has something to lose, just like the rest of us."

Bibi doesn't bother with threats. It didn't work last time and she sees no reason for it to work again. Instead she goes to Somin with her hat in her hands, her head bowed humbly, and asks for her pity. Today Bibi is a poor young mother, the kind of person Somin might see some of herself in, if she plays her cards right.

"I'm sorry, you have how many children?" Somin says, carefully manicured hands folded. They sit facing each other primly, in a park near the school Somin's children attend.

"Two," Bibi says, promptly. "Aged two and four."

"And where are they now?"

"Daycare," Bibi says without missing a beat.

"Which daycare centre?" Somin says, unhurried.

Bibi hesitates, just a microsecond, and it's enough for Somin to stand up, dusting off her spotless skirt. "I married a grifter," Somin says, cutting Bibi off before she can even start. "I know your kind. I'm not sure what you're after, but you won't get it from me."

She walks away coolly, and Bibi simply has to let her go.

 _Fucked up_ , Bibi texts to Wooyeon. _I'll try again tomorrow_.

But the next day is even worse. She gets a few sentences into her spiel - a carefully cooked-up story about trying to raise money for her sick father, and this time she made sure she knew which hospital he was staying at - before Somin walks, getting straight into her car and driving off.

 _What, again?_ Wooyeon says when Bibi tells her the news. She doesn't bother to reply.

After the third, fourth, fifth attempt, Bibi gives up. She confronts Somin, begs her to listen, and tells her... everything. 

"I'm doing this for someone I love," Bibi says. "This is the truth this time."

"This time?" Somin says, with just the slightest lift of her brow.

"You won't believe me," Bibi says, with a bitter smile, "but I'll tell you, if you can just give me a chance."

It must be something in her eyes, her voice, that prompts Somin to sit down and listen.

*

Same city, different casino, another time:

Bibi was playing her best version of a wide-eyed, naive ingenue. "Oh," she said, breathy, excited, when her 'date' for the night asked her to blow on the dice for luck. Superstitious fool. She did it anyway, watching him watching her with lidded, greedy eyes. They were all the same, these men. Hungry, lustful, stupid. 

She giggled at his jokes and gasped at his winnings and acted as though by the end of the night she wasn't going to drug him stupid and take all from him that was worth taking. Cash and cards, the latest model phone from his pocket, the heavy watch on his wrist. Even the wedding ring he'd carelessly concealed in the jacket of his designer suit. 

By the time he woke up, Bibi would be long gone - from his room, from the hotel, from this city. Maybe, one day, she'd leave this entire country behind.

That was the plan and she would've gone through with it if it hadn't been for _her_.

She had been at the casino that night too, standing by the side of another rich, careless man. Unlike Bibi she hadn't laughed, hadn't smiled. When the man pulled her into his lap, his hands stroking restlessly along her arms, her thighs, she said nothing. 

She said nothing, but her dark eyes met Bibi's across the gaming table, and Bibi felt the moment of recognition like an electric shock. For a moment Bibi felt as though she couldn't breathe, couldn't hear, that there was nothing in the world except _her_. 

"C'mere, baby," said Bibi's mark, and broke the illusion. Bibi shook herself a little, almost imperceptibly, and turned back to him to laugh and simper on cue. 

But she did not forget that look, and when the girl slipped away later, Bibi followed.

Bibi found the girl retouching her lipstick in the bathroom. Nervous as she hadn't been in years, Bibi set her bag down on the counter beside her. Their eyes met in the mirror, and Bibi felt her breath catch in her throat again.

"So it _is_ you," Bibi said, because she had doubted herself, doubted the evidence of her own eyes, until that moment. 

"Hyungseo," said Saehyun. It was the first time Bibi had heard her real name aloud in - months? Maybe even years. She wished Saehyun would say it again. "Not here," Saehyun whispered. "Not now. But later? Can you meet me?" 

Bibi just nodded, struck speechless, and accepted the bit of cardboard Saehyun pressed into her hand. She unfolded it later, when Saehyun had left the bathroom, and found it was a vintage-style matchbook, emblazoned with the logo of a nearby bar. There was just one match left.

She stayed in the casino just long enough to ditch her idiot mark and then made her way to the bar to wait, and drink, and wait. She was probably hours too early, but she had the jitters and her concentration was too shot to focus on anything else. 

How long had it been since they'd seen each other? Years and years. Saehyun had not been her first kiss, but perhaps she had been her first love. Way way back, when they'd both been young and something closer to innocent. They'd been in love, and in love with their dream - vowing to leave behind their no-hope town, their broken families, to make their fortunes in the city. 

Oh, just look at them now.

It was late, late, late by the time Saehyun slid into the booth beside her, looking tired and fragile but beautiful, still. "Hyungseo," she said, and she smiled suddenly. "I've missed you." She slipped her hand into Bibi's hand, where it fit as perfectly as it had all those years ago. 

And it was easy, suddenly, to talk to her. To fall in love with her all over again.

Bibi kissed her later that night in the darkness of the club as they swayed together, while the music played and the reflected light from the disco ball fell across their skin, their clothes, like a hundred glittering stars. 

"I can't stay," Saehyun said, in Bibi's arms, her cheek against Bibi's shoulder. "I shouldn't even be here." She held onto Bibi a moment longer, before she began to leave.

"But when can I see you again?" Bibi said, catching her by the wrist. "Saehyun. Please."

She'd hesitated, looking conflicted, but in the end she'd leaned back in to dip another kiss to Bibi's mouth and whispered, "Tomorrow. I'll come to you." 

So Bibi, who'd meant to burn her bridges and leave town forever, ended up staying one more day. Then one more week and one more month and another month more. Saehyun would come to her, for a few precious hours at a time, into her arms and into her bed, and for those hours they belonged to no one and nothing but each other. 

She had forgotten, almost, what it meant to be Hyungseo, before Saehyun came back into her life.

But at the end of those stolen hours Saehyun was always gone again, and Bibi would lie waiting, aching, for a next time that might never come.

One day, it finally happened. Saehyun did not come. 

Bibi waited a day, two days, three days. And still she did not come.

On the fourth day she went to the one of the girls Saehyun worked with, and was bluntly told: "She's gone. Forget about her."

Turns out their pimp had gotten himself into trouble at the craps table and gambled away half his girls in one night. The girl spit into the gutter when she said his name.

"Gambled to who? Gambled to where?"

"The Tiger," the girl said, and then named a place. Bibi recognised the name. It was one of the Tiger's places, the kind where girls worked themselves to death before ever paying off their debts, or were sold and shipped on to even worse places. 

Bibi took the news quietly. Then she left and went to buy a gun.

*

"I've tried shooting him," Bibi says. Somin is very attentive and very still. "I've tried poisoning him, stabbing him. It never works. But I have to keep trying, for her sake."

Somin looks away at last. She looks down at her handbag, snapping the clasp shut, and then she stands and walks away.

"That's it?" Bibi says to the air. She feels empty, defeated. And then angry. She'd poured out her heart and soul, given the whole and unvarnished truth, and it had done nothing, achieved nothing. She stands up and yells. "That's it? You're just going to walk away?"

Somin doesn't look back. 

"Fuck." Bibi curses and throws her phone, hard enough to shatter the screen.

 _What are you gonna do_ , Wooyeon says when Bibi finally calms down enough to give her an update.

Bibi taps out her reply slowly, the splintered glass of the screen shifting minutely beneath her fingertips. _Try again_ , she says grimly. _One more time._

Fuck the truth, she decides, where did the truth ever get her anyway? Only into more trouble. She'll make up another lie, a really good one this time, the lie that will finally press Somin's buttons and turn her to Bibi's side.

But when she goes to intercept Somin that day by the school gates, the other woman is already waiting. Bibi hesitates, but Somin is making her way over, grabbing Bibi by the arm so she can't run.

"You weren't lying," Somin says tightly, and beneath her ever-present veneer of composure Bibi can feel she's actually shaking, nails digging into Bibi's arm. "You really have tried, haven't you? Over and over again."

So the loop had got Somin too.

"I have," Bibi says, and the lies that waited on the tip of her tongue dissolve into nothing. "I'll keep trying. But if you can help me -"

"Yes," Somin says, and she laughs, a little hysterically. "I'll help you. Because I'm helping myself too, aren't I? Or we're both trapped like this forever."

"Three of us," Bibi says, and gently pries Somin's hand off her arm, holds it between her own. "There's three of us."

"What?"

"Come on," Bibi says. "I'll take you to meet her too."

*

Money can't buy happiness - but it can buy most things. 

Bibi needs money, doesn't have it. Somin solves that problem.

She bankrolls their scheme with the Tiger's own funds, so they can bribe the bouncers and the bartender to look away, and for the other hostesses to make themselves scarce. They're all too happy to simply take the cash, for the Tiger's never courted their loyalty and receives none in return. 

For the clientele, and the Tiger's men, and the Tiger himself - the answer is poison. 

Not enough to kill, but enough to send them to a deep dark sleep, dead to the world and the plans Bibi has for them.

Wooyeon is the one who hands out the shots. "On the house," she says, with a smile and a glance, and each of these rich, rich men take it without a single thought. They come from a world where they're used to taking what they want and are given the rest. This treatment they simply consider their due.

For the Tiger's own drink, his favourite vodka, Bibi would have loved to have stirred in the medicine herself. But she contents herself instead with standing and raising her glass, catching everyone's attention. 

"Your health," she says, loudly, and smiles as they all down their drinks.

The Tiger never catches on. The cards slip from his fingers, stacks of chips spill beneath his cheek as he sprawls across the table. Bibi picks up his wrist, drops it again; his hand lands with a heavy thud. 

"All out?" She looks around, does a quick visual check. Everyone is slumped in their seats, all except Wooyeon and Somin and herself. 

"Quick," Somin says, strung tight. "We have to hurry." It's only a matter of time before someone finds them.

Wooyeon and Somin go to the office where they keep the safe, snapping on gloves as they go, pulling out duffel bags from underneath Somin's desk. 

But Bibi heads out the back to the room behind the laundromat after fishing the keys out from the Tiger's pocket.

Saehyun had tried to run, tried to escape. They'd beaten her, brought her back, and when she tried to run again they'd brought her here. How long had she been there now? The girls at the brothel shrugged when Bibi asked and said two days, maybe three. Standard punishment for attempted escapees.

Two days, maybe three. Alone in the dark, the cold, with only the noise of the machines to accompany her. 

The first time that Bibi lived this night, she'd begged for Saehyun's freedom. The Tiger had just laughed so she'd held a gun to his head and died for her trouble.

This night, this night for the first and hopefully last time, she unlocks the rusty steel door with shaking hands. She slams on the light switch and the fluorescent tubes flicker to life. Inside, curled up with her knees to her chest, Saehyun slowly lifts her head.

"Hyungseo," she says, with a quiet, hoarse voice. "You came." 

"I found you," Bibi says, falling to her knees, running her hands over Saehyun's arms, her face, because she can't quite believe she's real. "You're safe now, I promise."

Saehyun says nothing but holds her back, holding on so tight, as though she'll never let her go.

*

They destroy the surveillance footage and split the cash and valuables, but leave the drugs after calling in a tip to the authorities. The charges likely won't stick - men like the Tiger and his ilk rarely pay for the wrongs they've done - but it will slow him and his people down for days and weeks, maybe even months if they're lucky.

"Will I see you all tomorrow?" Wooyeon says, with a wry smile. "God, I hope not."

Somin shudders discreetly at the thought before making a brief little bow to them all. "Good luck," she says, and then walks away. Bibi doesn't blame her for not lingering; she and her children have a lot to do to pack up their lives before the night is out, if they're finally free of the loop.

For Wooyeon it's simpler. She'll take an overnight train to another big city, for adventures still unknown. She's a hustler - Bibi's sure she'll find her feet and her fortune somewhere. 

As for Bibi and Saehyun, they go down to the docks to wait. Bibi's arranged it all - a boat out of the country and into the next, all under cover of darkness. The captain has been well paid and asks no questions, averting his eyes as they board and make their way into the cabin. 

Silently, swiftly, the ship leaves the harbour, with only the stars to witness them.

"Do you remember," Saehyun says, yawning and exhausted, head pillowed in Bibi's lap, "do you remember when we were kids? We'd stay out all night in the woods, and I'd get drunk on that awful peach soju, and you'd tell me all your big, grand ideas?"

"Really? Really now?" Bibi laughs softly. Now that they're together, the memories seem sweet rather than bitter. "You're gonna remind me of every embarrassing thing I said when I was sixteen?"

"Every day," Saehyun says, with a smile, eyes fluttering shut. "I'm gonna do it every day."

Bibi shakes her head, keeps running her fingers through Saehyung's long dark hair. "You used to weave ferns into my hair," she whispers, in case she's sleeping. "Like a crown."

Too nervous and restless to sleep, Bibi waits out the whole long night. When Bibi finally dares to check the date on her phone, she lets out a silent sigh of relief. At long, long last - it's a new day. On the horizon, as they sail into the east, the sun slowly rises. 

"Look," the hero whispers, to the princess. "The dawn."

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](http://twitter.com/kpopliar)/[tumblr](http://popliar.tumblr.com)


End file.
